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Final Destination 5: Horror at its Goriest

When I first found out that Hollywood was making Final Destination 5, I wasn’t very excited. I was very unimpressed with Part 4 and I felt that this was just going to be another attempt to ride the 3D bandwagon. However, after watching part 5, I did a complete 360 because I have not had this much fun from seeing horror in while. FD 5 was the bomb!

Final Destination 5 follows the same plot as the four movies before it. Instead of a ____ (fill in the blank with plane crash, road accident, roller coaster derailment, or Nascar accident), a group of eight survivors from a suspension bridge collapse now have to deal with the repercussions of their ” good luck.” Nicolas D’Agosto plays the role of Sam, a guy who works for the paper but who really wants to be a chef. He is the guy who saves his co-workers (including his girlfriend) and gets them off the bus after he has a premonition of their death similar to the earlier installments.

Filmmakers seemed to have upped their game since the lame FD4, which focused on developing the 3D and making a quick buck rather than giving audiences something. Ten minutes into FD5, audiences would feel like they have survived a marathon because of the sheer goriness and brutality of the suspension bridge scene. Never have I seen any hatchet movie or horror flick that shows the same lack of mercy and thrill value as the first 10 minutes of this film. I am not a squeamish person by nature, but I was cringing and screaming with every death scene in this movie. It was that good. It was that interesting and it was that unique. It was that fun. I know a lot of people would be skeptical and say, what haven’t we seen at this point, right? But believe me, this movie will school viewers on what still needs to be learned about the horror genre.

What elevates this movie above the rest is that it was not a chore to watch. It doesn’t try to live up to the hype or its predecessors. It develops its own story and proceeds the way it is supposed to. Viewers don’t need to figure out a great mystery to get their just rewards in the end. The movie follows a basic structure and goes through it in a fast paced sequence but gives the audiences a chance to rest up and absorb the brutality of one death scene before the next one follows.

What’s great about this movie is that everybody knows that the deaths are a given but the scenes will keep audiences guessing until the very end. Before I entered the cinema, I was saying that they would be hard pressed to top the scene in part 2 where the kid got flattened on the street by a glass panel after escaping a near death experience at the dentist but again, I was proven wrong. Credit to the creative team of Final Destination 5. They managed to raise the level of horror to new heights. These guys have thought of a great many ways to get rid of their characters in grisly fashion.

But no matter how I gush about the death scenes, my favorite part is still the connection of the movie to the first Final Destination film. I really didn’t figure it out until it was staring me in the face. There were clues scattered all over the movie leading to it, little ones admittedly, but they were there. I guess the film succeeded to distract me enough from thinking, making the surprise ending doubly awesome.

Final verdict. Not for the faint hearted but great for everyone else. Regardless if you watch it on 3D or 2D, its guaranteed to be awesome! It is not to be missed. This may well be the best in the franchise, and among the best in the genre that I’ve seen. Very very cool.